Tag Archives: ingredients

This recipe is not for the faint of heart. Not because it’s difficult, but because it’s so absurdly easy and delicious that, before you know it, you’l be hypnotized into eating it straight from the pan with a spoon.

There just has to be magic at play here, because somehow, a can of sweetened condensed milk baked in a water bath for an hour and a half turns into a thick, creamy caramel sauce.

I like to store it in a Bonne Maman jar, because that way, it’s jam, which means I can have it for breakfast, right?

This was the sight I met with yesterday morning when I strode over to the grocery store. Piles and stacks and crates full of pumpkins. A sea of orange so vast and so bright that I nearly wept with joy. I have a strong love for and obsession with pumpkin.

Every year, right around the middle of September, I get bitten by the pumpkin bug, an overwhelming need to bake anything and everything pumpkin-related. Sadly, I always have to wait a couple more weeks for them to start showing up in grocery stores. I have nothing against Libby, but there’s really nothing better than homemade pumpkin puree, so those weeks spent waiting for fresh pumpkin are some of the worst in the whole year. But then, all of a sudden, they appear, and all is right in the world again. Never leave me again, pumpkin. I am lost without you.

Pumpkin puree is one of those things where the commercial version is probably just as good as the homemade version. Libby’s is actually great – it doesn’t taste artificial in the way that other canned goods tend to do. But I prefer to make my own because preservatives make me nervous, and I just love the smell of roasted pumpkins. And also, pumpkin seeds, of course.

Can we talk about butter? And how amazing and beautiful and miraculous it is? Because it is all of those things and more. I’ve been interested in homemade butter since elementary school, when I read the Little House on the Prairie books, but I always figured it was something you could only do with a butter churn. Thank you, Google, for showing me that that is not the case.

Can we also talk about Mason jars? And how useful they are? I know they’ve reached a saturation point by now, but they really do live up to the hype. They’re great for canning and making single serving oatmeal, cake, and also, apparently, butter.

Basically, what you do is pour heavy cream into a jar and shake the ever loving shit out of it. It’s a great arm workout since it’s essentially the concept behind the Shake Weight, except instead of just looking stupid and working out your arms, you look stupid and tone your arms AND get butter out of it. Victory: you.